By Legal Futures’ Associates DPS Software
The Access Group (Access), today announced the acquisition of DPS Software (DPS), a UK leader in SaaS based Practice Management software for Legal Practices and In-House Legal departments, with a focus on firms with between 10 and 200 employees. The addition of DPS, follows shortly after the groups’ acquisition of Eclipse and will deliver a suite of solutions that cover a vast array of legal processes and will target practices with between 10 and 500 employees. Combined with Access’s existing market presence is now one of the top 3, UK based providers of software, to the UK legal sector.
DPS was founded in 1988 by Osman Ismail and delivered its first system to the legal sector in 1991. Since then DPS has focused solely on delivering comprehensive solutions to solicitors, in-house legal operations and legal departments within local authorities. Based on its experience in this market and recognising the sectors need to become more technology focused and secure, DPS embarked on delivering one of the first SaaS based Practice Management systems available in the UK. Prior to acquisition DPS was the largest privately owned provider of SaaS based solutions to the UK Legal sector.
Doug Sawers, Managing Director for the Access Legal Division, commented: “Access has a strong heritage in serving legal firms primarily with back offices systems like HR and Compliance. With the recent acquisition of Eclipse Software and the addition today of DPS, we are positioned as one of the largest providers of software solutions in the UK Legal sector, serving more than 3,500 organisations in the UK and a growing number globally. With the addition of the DPS solutions on the Access Workspace platform we can now deliver Case & Practice Management to more than 99% of the UK Legal market.”
Scott Ridley, Managing Director, DPS added: “This is different to other acquisitions in the UK legal tech sector, Osman and I will be staying with the business and enhancing the depth of Legal expertise in Access. We chose Access for this very reason, as they understand the need for industry knowledge and expertise not just the technology we developed. Our people and their experience in the sector is clearly valued and will grow under the Access framework. We’ve now got the agility of a smaller company combined with the investment, scalability & structure of a larger group.
